Last month, Garmin announced access to its ECG feature within the European Union (and Australia) for Fenix 8, Venu 3, and Venu 2 Plus users. However, Fenix 7 Pro & Epix Pro users were left in the literal January cold. As I said at the time, “this is one of the more baffling decisions I’ve seen in recent times from Garmin.” After all, it made no technical or regulatory sense. The ECG App is certified by regulators at the app + sensor hardware level. The Fenix 8 & Fenix 7 Pro units share identical hardware at that level, as demonstrated by the US release (and for that matter, Venu 3 release in the EU).
Adding fuel to the fire, when I asked Garmin at the time why the Fenix 7 Pro & Epix Pro units were getting skipped, they basically sidestepped the question and essentially implied only future “forward-looking” devices would get it.
Obviously, that didn’t go well with either me or the Internet.
And, as a Valentine’s Day gift to European Union and Australian users, you can now enable ECG on your Fenix 7 Pro and Epix Pro units. This also includes the D2 Mach 1 Pro, Quatix 7 Pro, and Tactix 7 AMOLED – all of which have Garmin’s Gen5 optical HR sensor in them (whereas the Tactix 7 non-AMOLED uses the Gen4 sensor).
To activate this, you’ll simply walk through the steps outlined in my previous post on this. It takes all of 1-2 minutes to get started, super quick and easy:
Note that, as before, the UK is excluded here. Obviously, with the UK no longer in the EU, the regulatory process is different and, in turn, requires more approvals. Of course, as before, you can always activate your device when traveling to the EU (or US), and then it remains activated permanently. I suggest a warm sunny location.
As for Garmin’s change of heart, who knows? Perhaps after the GPS fiasco a few weeks ago, they’re looking for some love. Or perhaps it was the heavy pushback from users. Or perhaps they just wanted to get into the Valentine’s spirit. Who knows. That said, what is clear is users are more and more pushing back on the concept that recently released watches shouldn’t get new features via firmware.
Garmin had been doing really well on that front in the last few years in the case of Forerunner, Edge, and Fenix/Epix (save Venu/Vivoactive, cause it never gets back-love). But it feels like since the fall, and the release of the Fenix 8, that approach was shifting. Given the Q1 2025 update list is almost exclusively new hardware units (at least in terms of the most interesting features), I’m not convinced that approach is changing, at least anytime soon.
In the meantime though, Fenix 7 Pro & Epix Pro users can enjoy the new feature.
With that – thanks for reading
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